A Heated Debate Between Two Charismatic Geniuses: A Cardinal Fan (Jeff Lung) and a Tiger Fan (Allen Krause)

Results tagged ‘ NBA ’

If you had to choose between watching the Heat and the Mavericks in the NBA Finals or the Cubs and the Pirates playing a mid-week series, what would you choose?

HenryMechanicsburg, PA____________________________________

Hold on a second here, Henry. I know where you’re going with this and believe me, the old me would high-five you, pat you on the back for representin’ the greatest game on earth and laugh in the face of all those suckas entranced by David Stern’s tamed down version of the WWE. The problem is, a funny thing happened to me during the baseball offseason, and now I too can be considered a cog in the NBA machine.

This is not a bad thing!

To me, baseball still sits atop the professional sports world. It simply can’t be beat. If you are looking for an exact explanation as to why I feel this way, just check the over 1100+ posts in our RSBS back catalogue, consider my socially-backwards tendencies of staying home on Friday and Saturday nights so I can watch five straight hours of baseball undisturbed and you should be drunk with the RSBS brand of baseball championing.

But there’s something subtly intoxicating about the NBA this year too, from the LeBron disaster to the fall of the Lakers to the bright futures of Westbrook, Rose and Durant… I mean, watching those guys drive to the hoop over 7 foot monsters is pretty close to watching a suicide squeeze late in a tight ballgame. And I can appreciate this electrifying comparison — finally, after a self-imposed decade long hiatus from basketball fandom — because this year I had my very own private NBA tutor walk me through what I have missed (the storylines, the heroics, the defeats — it’s all very soap opera-ish), to explain what “pick and pop” means, to show me the entire floor for a full understanding of the sport.

So to answer your question, Henry… I will be watching Heat/Magic on Tuesday. You bet. I wouldn’t miss Dirklicious schoolin’ the most hated man in all of sports. Of course, I’ll be watching it! But, like all the other games before it, I will be watching with one caveat: that my laptop is running four live baseball games and my finger is set to scroll my MLB Extra Innings package during all commercial breaks.

RSBS Special Correspondent and Podcast Slavedriver, Mr. Johanna Mahmud reports:He Plays with a Load in His Hands

The NFL draft is Thursday and that means we evaluate everything about everyone’s everything. From their toe sizes to wingspans to ability to play with others to punctuality to how long they can sit through the last season of Oprah to the limitations of their menstrual cycles to how many yards they can throw a Mexican snapping turtle to how they would handle Kanye taking their MVP trophies away and giving them to Beyonce.

It’s a lot to sift through.

AND FUN!!!

Which reminded me of what’s going on with MLB closers now. Closers seem to be chosen for teams primarily by stuff and grit but also based on looks and intangibles. So….. I’ve listed some of what I look for in potential closers for when I’m king of the Cubs and I take over as Czar of the DAMNED……

The following quotes describe facial expressions, which are the best way to determine who’s got the right stuff to end games for me:

“I’m so damn mad I’d punch a baby!”TRANSLATION: I did odd things to Barbie dolls when my sister wasn’t looking.

“I’m gonna come over to your house tonight, wear your sister’s makeup and then beat her to death.”TRANSLATION: I’m confused about where slavery begins and my basement’s interior design ends….

“I’m good at rallying a team from behind!”TRANSLATION: What I really need is a bearded man with a vintage cardigan who will tell me “he has to see about a girl and its not your fault, Brian Daisy Fuentes.”

“I’ve wet myself many times in public, but I DON’T CARE…”TRANSLATION: I’ve wet myself many times in public, but I DON’T CARE.

“The best thing about me other than my heater is that I should have played the lead in Our Town. I’m egotistical, fiery aggressive and I have great athletic skillz.”TRANSLATION: My name is Jeffery Lung and I will pretend to be your closer for a third of an inning. CHEERS!!!

Dickensian Asylum, One Good Player, Bad Paper. Little to Make Me Excite.

The Cubs, for me, are pushing the human existence backwards and making hearts sad.

Another season is already bogging me down.

I was watching the Rockies kill/drub/maim the Cubs on Sunday (the same expansion team that has already been to a World Series, and, like the Marlins teams that have won two so far, also have exciting young talent despite playing in a small market) I couldn’t change the channel back to the NBA playoffs fast enough.

My beloved Bulls and D. Rose are the only things keeping me breathing.

With the Cubs, it’s not so much the bad baseball and the lack of power, but mostly just the fact that they’re boring and unsatisfying. I think I’d rather watch a touring band of angry flying Arabs and Mexicans on ice. Then you’d have something! Or just So Taguchi.

Starlin Castro might be the best player in Chicago, and some hope exists for that fact alone, but with all the bad contracts and old players getting older, I must face the music now: the Cubs can’t compete for baseball immortality by winning the World Series for at least another 2-4 YEARS. I guess that’s not the end of the world given the century mark came and went.

But, it still blows.

I had a birthday recently and time moves faster now. When I was 15 I thought I’d never be 25, but that happened. Then I knew I had forever til 30. Then… that happened.

The Cubs last had a real chance of winning it all three years ago. Swept by the Dodgers and feeling and hurting and poopooing and getting raped way too much like when they were swept the year before. Look, this isn’t 1500 words about how much pain I’ve endured in my life being a Cubs fan. This is about “I know they’re not great and won’t be for a while but please let them just. be. fun……”

They play station-to-station baseball, have very little power and carry a distinct lack of personality (the personality I get from Carlos Zambrano I don’t need so much). So in essence, they’re a slow team that can’t hit bombs and are extremely boring. On a daily basis. GUHHH…… HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE??

The one thing to rely on (we thought) was decent starting pitching. Currently the Cubs have the least amount of quality starts in baseball.

For the love of god, if you’re going to suck, at least be fun! I mean be like fun bad!!?? Like when the Bears are bad you’ll at least have a good time watching Devin Hester returning kicks or Jay Cutler throwing it all over the field or Lovie Smith waking up once in a while to say something to our lesbian-looking offensive coordinator Michael Martz in a roller coaster train wreck loss. That can be fun!

The Cubs were terrible ten years ago but Sammy Sosa at least was exalting the baseball gods with soaring rips into the bleachers completely unaided by anabolic substances of any kind. Seriously. This is true. He told me. When Kerry wood pitched, grown men wept, women went into early labor, George Bush liked black people, and I thought Creed had potential as a legitimate artistic talent. Dusty Baker gave verbose speeches of the utmost linguistic integrity, dripping with so much backwoods gibberish that I hung on his every word and swooned with how a man so simple could speak so eloquently…

“It’s called hitting, and it ain’t called walking. Do you ever see the top 10 walking? You see top 10 batting average. A lot of those top 10 do walk.”

WORDSY!

“When you first come up, you want to get some hits”

VERBOSOSITY!!“Peoples have been trying to bring me down. That’s OK, that’s how it is. Actually, that makes me stronger. It’s OK. What are you going to say when I kick somebody’s butt?”

SUPERINTIMIDATINGWORDSYVERBOSOSITY!!!

When I first moved to Chicago, going to Wrigley was a cathartic experience. Finally, I could go to games whenever I wanted, which was something I remember dreaming of when I was just a pup watching with Grandpa every Saturday on WGN with Stone and Harry. After watching the game with Grandpa, I would immediately run outside to field tennis balls off the concrete stairs, pretending I was Shawon Dunston.

I don’t have great memories of Wrigley anymore. Just heartache and a wanton desire for greatness. The fond memories I have of the Cubs are really just afternoons hangin with Grandpa. That’s what I miss.

Now it’s just pain.

And again, I’d see a priest but I’m still good looking enough that he might try to do odd things to me.

The Cubs may lose this season but for the love of god…. give me excite!!

This weekend provided some flat out taint tickling and nipple pulling excitement golf at the Masters. And…guess what….because…wait for it…. Tiger Damn Woods was in the middle of it. Shocker.

If Tiger isn’t playing, I’m not watching. If Tiger isn’t in the hunt, I’m usually running naked through the yard, among other Sunday things on my to-do list.

The thing with Tiger is it’s so rare to watch someone be the absolute best at something. Jazz-wise we have Coltrane, Armstrong, Miles, Ellington, Parker, Ornette. Once in a lifetimers. I’m not necessarily a golf fan, but I am Tiger fan. I want him to get back to just assassinating the field every weekend he plays. It brings me joy to see anyone he’s paired with pee his pants and lose his s***, or as Ralphy Wiggums would say, “I have two kinds of wet in my pants.”

It’s not about how nice he is or was to the fans, or exceptionally boring and emotionless to the media. I couldn’t care less. It’s not about his love of whooouures. And it’s not about me watching to see a devoted, faithful husband church goin family man.

I want the stone cold killa. I want him to murder people. The way he used to.

I had no problem when Michael Jordan would talk trash, or be a complete pr!ck to his teammates; because his play was legendary. His competitiveness was legendary boarding on hilariousness. “Dude, Jordan just knocked out Horace Grant in practice! He’s so competitive…” “Did you hear Michael put arsenic in Cartwright’s Cheerios to motivate him? SO COMPETITIVE…”

To me, Barry Bonds was different because he cheated the game. Big Mac (Mark McGwire) cheated the game. I loved Jose Canseco (mostly for trading card purposes) as a kid, but he cheated and ever since he retired he has been completely worthless, (other than exposing some other users).

I was a Bulls fan growing up, but I know non Bulls fans across the world that prayed that they could witness in person what M-Jeff could do on any given night. To be there transfixed on the master transforming the court, baseline to baseline, into a cathedral of windmilling-above-the-rim-artistry. Poetry in white-hot electric motion. Also, the only guy ever who could pull off a Hitler stache….

The same goes for Tiger. Putts that always fall at the most clutch times, power rips from the rough, bunker shots that no one will ever make one out of 1000 times.

In baseball, (believe it or not), some of the worst people ever are LEGENDARY PLAYERS. Or….as I would like to dub, the Veda Pierce division, (fyi, watch the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. Amazing. The daughter Veda Pierce is the worst, most vile piece of filth I’ve ever encountered in a film character. Yeeshh…WOMEN are awful to each other. The things women say to their own friends is unbelievable. We’ll save this for another time.)

A short list in the V-Pierce division……..Ty Cobb, (beat up a man with no hands once), Mickey Mantle (showed up wasted to games and told young endearing fans to buzz off), Bonds (liar…liar…cheat), Jeff Kent (renowned male member), Roger Clemens (no explanation necessary), Ugueth Urbina, (not so legendary but assaulted servants unwarranted with a machete for swimming in his pool, now in jail for 20 years…) etc…..

Tiger doesn’t have a great rep with the fans, but how many times were Nicklaus and Palmer miked up and how many times did they yell at fans to shut up or trash talked or cussed up and down the course that we’ll never know about?

We don’t ask the legends to be humanitarians, nor wonderful people. We need them to be heroes of their game. Our heroes won’t always be nice. But they DO things no one else can or ever will do. Everything else is perception mixed with irrational desire for purity. The true pureness is the game played at the highest level.

That’s all I want.

And Latrell Sprewell choking P.J. Carlesimo, because don’t we all want to choke P.J. Carlesimo at some point?? I mean….he tried to play Kevin Durant at shooting guard???

Do you remember what you were doing in the 90’s? Specific moments stick out, like the first time I saw the internet, an incident that also went down as the first time the internet ruined the outcome of a sporting event (’96 Olympics). Specific music, like Pearl Jam, Guns n’ Roses and Nirvana, provided the soundtrack. Tragic events also play a role, like when I realized that my tight-rolled jeans were no longer socially acceptable.

Honestly, I have no desire to relive most of these events. If I want to listen to a little GnR, I download them on iTunes. Tight-rolling has gone the way of beanie babies and grunge. And although the internet still manages to find ways to spoil things:

This is why I ask the question, why would people choose to relive the 90’s? Because apparently it’s happening even as we speak:

Oregon isn’t all bad and I’m sure that many wonderful people live there. But why choose Portland? Go north and you’ve got Seattle and their Mariners. Go south and you have San Francisco and their world champion Giants. Portland? Trailblazers. Although if you’re still living in the 90’s, I guess that means you also have Clyde Drexler and a shot at the NBA Championship. Hope this doesn’t come as a spoiler guys, but you’re going to lose to both the Pistons and the Bulls. Damn internets!

Whether he’s hawking random expletives, labeling Jay Mariotti as “a garbage” or mumbling Spanglish idioms no one understands during the World Series on Fox, Ozzie Jose Guillen is always entertaining.

And while his latest project may be getting Jake Peavy to respect his own body (regarding injury, not that Jesusy “your body is a temple” stuff), we should all certainly stop to thank the baseball gods that, despite his busy schedule, Ozzie still has time to tweet.

Oh yes.

Ozzie tweets.

It’s just that… sometimes, his tweets… they’re not easy to comprehend. And that’s where RSBS and our faithful interns get to work!

Let us enter the interwebs to analyze some of Ozzie’s latest…

My dog dh needs a gf he want to be charlie sheen he is desperate lolMarch 3, 2011Translation: I think it’d be funny if my dog did a bunch of coke, assaulted hookers and got fired from the best job in television, ‘cuz let’s face it: self-destruction is hilarious.

Very nice day off great golf 89 finnaly play good any cuestion ask oney lol yesssssMarch 15, 2011Translation: Punctuation? Spelling? I don’t need no stinking punctuation or spelling! Ask one of my delinquent sons!Nice shot james lolFebruary 24, 2011Translation: Bet you wish you had a Derrick Rose, right, LeBron?!?! (this tweet came during one of the Bulls’ three victories over the Heat — right after LeBron threw up a humiliating BRICK towards the end of the game.)

Open a jack in the box in chicago pleaseFebruary 24, 2011Translation: I have an E Coli addiction and I need a fix! Stat!

The proverbial (and literal) gloves come off in this verbal masquerade of utter ridiculousness and yes, injuries do occur (though mostly to Johanna and, since they are mental in nature, hardly noticed). Among the topics of conversation one will find: Jeff’s wandering Forever 21 eyes, Zack Greinke’s ribs, the difference between a half and a full nelson, Cameroonian baseball, Bud Selig-bashing take 47 and much, much more… all to make you smile, laugh and play!

*Special thanks to our PodMaster Keith Carmack. Keith is all over the interwebz killin’ it. You should definitely check out his crew and their subsequently hilarious podcast at Undercard Films. And keep your eye out for what’s next. Dude’s makin’ a movie!

And no, silly, this has nothing to do with Estonia joining the Eurozone, though I do admit, that Eurozone has a lot more going for it than just a snazzy name now that Estonia is in the mix! Look out European Union, ‘cuz y’all haven’t seen oil shale til you’ve seen Estonia!

No, what I actually want to tell you about is something I am still rather reluctant to report: I’ve… I’ve been watching… basketball.

AGGGGHHHHH!

I know, I know, I know… I gave up on basketball back before Charles Barkley ate Jabba the Hutt and I never, EVER, had any regrets. It’s an individual sport. A natural obsession for those with ADHD. An abomination of the thinking man’s game.

Yes, I still believe all of the above is true… but, it was a long, arduous baseball offseason for me and I got antsy and I was just begging for something — anything! — to get me to Spring Training and that’s when I saw…

I saw something… something special… something… MAGICAL.

His name is Derrick Rose.

Now I’m not going to go all John Kerry and flip-flop on y’all… but I am going to admit that I am willing to work with this here NBA thing a little bit longer. Because while the Kobe Bryants and LeBron James and Chris Boshes of the world may leave a sour taste in the mouth of public opinion, Derrick Rose is not just a budding superstar beginning to dominate the entire league, but he is also (as far as I can tell) a genuinely nice guy.

People like him. He’s cool. He’s just a kid having fun.

And I was at a game earlier this season where he did this:

I saw that and I just knew. I just knew, this kid is gonna kill the competition. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the NBA this year (again, I don’t blame if you haven’t), he is doing just that. In fact, I liken his domination to that of Albert Pujols: when I watch him play, I feel like I am watching one of the greatest who ever lived.

Soon, real baseball games will begin and my full attention will be focused on the boys of summer; but I can honestly say, for the first time since the Clinton administration, I will definitely be checking in on the Bulls’ playoff progress.

Don’t hate me. ‘Cuz I’m right.

Peace,

Jeff

PS, If you want to see three minutes and forty-four seconds more of Derrick Rose magic, check out this vid!

When it comes to teams I really wish I could get behind, it starts and ends with the Seattle Mariners. Yes, I admit: my heart really goes out to the city of Seattle and its long moribund baseball team. Since that magical 2001 season, things haven’t been too bright in the Emerald City.

They lost their NBA basketball team. Their football team is… well, it has had its ups and downs, (mostly downs). And the M’s… well, let’s just say that maybe Safeco Field would be better suited to host the Ichiro Show than an actual full nine every day.

In fact, Ichiro is to Kim Kardashian’s bum as the Mariners are to Kim as a whole. The bright spot in Kim’s persona is that beautiful backside, whereas Kim the person, is pretty much an embarrassment to human development. As soon as she opens her mouth and begins talking, it is instantly evident that no matter what she says, listening to her is a colossal waste of time, each word acting as an individual assassin of brain cells.

So I wish the Mariners good luck this season — like I always do — but I’m pretty sure any attention I pay them will, once again, revolve around the always entertaining Ichiro highlight reel.

My insatiable quest for knowledge is rooted in the works of that dapper fella pictured here to the right. That’s Carl Sagan. You can call him Mr. Awesome if ya want. I do.

I was but a child when I first watched his infamous Cosmosseries — a series that, for the very first time, made me realize that the mysteries of life, of the universe, of existence as we know it are far more grand and far more expansive than anything I could ever understand in my lifetime.

But, more importantly, it taught me to always ask questions.

And that’s what I’m doin’ today… ‘cuz some of this shizzo just doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s take a look at some contemporary mysteries of the universe, shall we?

Kyle Farnsworth Has a Job. Gregg Zaun Has a Job. Jermaine Dye Does NOT Have a Job. Again.

How does this work? How does a bonafide game-yacker who cries a lot get paid $3 plus million a year while Jermaine Dye sits at home drinking scotch, watching NBA League Pass and surfing the 900 channels? And Gregg Zaun? Isn’t he an AARP officer? The dude’s knees must be concrete by now! Dye had what it takes to play last year and no one gave him a deal because he supposedly wanted too much money. Well, I’m sorry, but I’d rather pay Dye decent money to do his thang rather than throw it at the above two fellas knowing the bad days have a good chance of outweighing the good.

General Electric No Longer Holds Majority Ownership of NBCWHAT?!? What is Jack Donaghy gonna pimp now? Skin-a-max? Oh, wait… that’s not such a bad idea!

Armando Gallaraga’s Very Bad… Life

He went from rookie sensation (2008) to minor league road block (2009) to work-in-progress (2010) to the imperfect game… THEN… in just a matter of hours went from agreeing to a $2.3 million contact to being DESIGNATED FOR ASSIGNMENT! DFA’D YO!!! That’s the sort of thing that happens to the Wilson Betemits of the world, not someone who had a perfect game ripped from his reach!

Matt Drudge’s Recent Lapse in Calling President Obama a Socialist

Oh… wait. Nevermind. Mystery solved because there is no mystery. He just went two days without a dig. That’s… strange, but not mysterious.

And finally… one of the universe’s biggest mysteries…How Many Donuts Can Prince Fielder’s $15.5 Million Contract Really Buy?

As far as I know, vegetarians can eat donuts.

And that’s a whole lot of donuts.

Yet I do not doubt Prince’s ability to devour them all.

Hate me ‘cuz I went a whole week without a Prince-Fielder-Is-Fat joke, just don’t hate me ‘cuz I’m right.

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